Dangerous Designs Read online

CHAPTER TWELVE

  Storey headed for the last door.

  Eric reached it ahead of her and opened it. "There should be lights on." He scanned the room before crossing past the big oval table and to the door on the far end. Storey followed.

  The meeting chamber didn't appear to have been used since she'd been here last. Cups and bottles littered the table and the chairs sat everywhere, as if pushed back in a hurry. It was consistent with an emergency meeting having been called or everyone having left at a run.

  Eric disappeared into the next room. Only it wasn't a room at all, but a long hallway with doors set off each other in military precision as far as Storey could see. The floor gleamed in white tile. The walls and ceiling sparkled in winter white, almost blinding her. Nothing, but black hardware marred the pristine color.

  "What's with all the white?"

  "White is the color of power." He came to a stop at the third door on the left. He knocked.

  The doors reached from floor to ceiling. Storey couldn't help comparing the building to an institution of locked cells. There was a real creepiness to the emptiness. "If there were people walking around, the place wouldn't be quite so off-putting."

  He turned to give her a curious glance, then pushed open the door. "Paxton, are you in here?"

  No answer. He poked his head around the corner of the door and called out louder, "Paxton?"

  The stillness of a place that should have been teeming with activity gave her the willies. "It's not Sunday, is it?"

  Eric pushed the door fully open, then paused to look back at her. "You ask the darnedest questions. What does Sunday have to do with it?"

  "I don't know. I just thought that if it were Sunday, then it would make sense that no one was here. Or if it were night time? Could everyone be asleep? Are we even on the same clock?" She couldn't help asking the easy questions. It would help bring clarity for him.

  His lips quirked. "Remember, we're still on the same planet. Same solar system. If it's daytime on one side of the veil, it's daytime on the other. It is Sunday, although we call it something slightly different here. Even on council days, this building is always manned."

  He walked through what appeared to be a small apartment, heading for the far side of the room. There was a weird set of cushions on the floor. Furniture of some kind. As she passed it, her leg accidentally brushed the edge and it moved. She jumped back, her hand slamming against her chest. The furniture rose and adjusted, almost as if it were fitting to her size.

  "Holidays. And no, not church." He snickered. "Come on, we don't have time to play with the furniture."

  Giving the furniture a wide berth, she glared at him. "I don't consider a cushion that looks like it's going to eat me as funny, thank you."

  "That's a polo chair." At her blank look, he added, "One size fits all."

  She gave the cushion one last assessing look, realizing it had shrunk back down to its original size. Handy. The next room appeared to be a bedroom. She wandered around. What else did was different over here? The bed looked normal, although higher than she was used to, with a small set of stairs on the side. No headboard, but a control panel of some kind had been mounted on the wall above some more weird looking pillows. She stayed well away from it just in case it moved, too.

  Everything was white.

  Glancing down at her black jeans, black boots and her charcoal t-shirt, she realized she looked and felt like a dandelion amongst the roses.

  Eric checked out the room and stood in the doorway of a smaller room. She could only surmise that it was a bathroom of some kind. Not that she'd seen anything along those lines since she'd been here. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realized she needed to pee. Damn.

  She headed in the same direction Eric had disappeared. It wasn't a bathroom. It appeared to be another lab. "What on earth? Why would he have another lab here?"

  "This is his private lab. And the one other place I expected to find him." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Paxton doesn't go anywhere else. He can't. Where the hell can he be?"

  "He can't go anywhere? Ever?" She studied the all white and silver room, so painfully clean she had to resist the urge to toss a cabinet to make it look normal.

  "No. You don't understand. He doesn't do well in the outside – something to do with his extreme age."

  "How old is he?"

  "No one knows. He won't talk about it. Somewhere between two and three hundred."

  Storey choked. "Several hundred. What is the life expectancy of your people?"

  He frowned. "Same as your people, I imagine. Although, we've eradicated disease and aging, so maybe not."

  She blinked. "Did you say eradicated? More of your superior speak, I suppose. I presume you mean you wiped those two things out? We could sure use that technology. My people live to only 70 or 80 and anyone who makes it over 100 is considered very long-lived."

  A weird crack sounded in the other room.

  Pushing her behind him, Eric held his finger to his lip and motioned back to the main living room. He snuck up to the doorway and peered inside. Something crashed to the floor in the other room.

  "Crap. What was that?" she hissed, racing to his side.

  "Get down." He yanked her behind the wall. "Are you nuts?" He stood up and peered around the corner. "Whoever it was is gone." Racing to the window on the far wall, he searched the outside grounds.

  "A window?" She laughed and ran to his side. "That's the first one I've seen here. I wondered if you had them."

  He shot another strange look in her direction. "You're really odd, you know. Come on. We have to continue searching." His voice had chilled. "Someone has to be left around here."

  Storey followed in silence as Eric strode from door to door, opening each and every one, calling out constantly. No one answered. The place, that huge mausoleum, was empty.

  "Do you guys have an underground bunker, a safe room, or something?"

  "Not if you mean like a place to hide when under attack. Remember, we don't have wars. This is extremely unusual."

  That's not the word she'd have used. But if this sidelined the death sentence on her head, she was all for it. She stood in the hallway and waited as he finished checking each door. Nothing. "Now what?"

  "We're going to my place."

  She perked up. "How far away?"

  "Only a couple of minutes."

  "Oh good. Do you have bathrooms here?"

  He winced. "Of course. You are so weird."

  "I'm weird. Look at the way you're acting. I'd have contacted the people I care about and have checked the media for updates. The Internet would be teeming with news. Look at you. You don't even know where to look to find out the news. Do you have media here? Computers? Internet? Phones? How much research did you have to do to blend into my world?"

  She was almost shouting by the time she finished, struggling to keep up with him as he followed a series of twists and turns. He came to standstill in front of yet another white door. It opened on its own.

  "How'd you do that?"

  "It's my apartment. Why wouldn't it open for me?"

  "Gee, I don't know, maybe because you didn't open it with your hand."

  "I don't need to, it’s tuned to my vibration."

  She nodded. "Yup. I can see how that might work. Not."

  She walked into another sparse, almost utilitarian type of apartment. Eric's had even less furniture than Paxton’s rooms, and it was equally as nondescript. There was no personality here. Nothing on the walls to liven things up. If she lived here, the first thing she'd do is get out her paint brush and color the world.

  "How long have you lived here?"

  "Again with the questions. Since I was old enough to live on my own."

  Sensing this might answer a lot of questions, she asked, "How long ago was that and how old were you?"

  "I would have been the same age as everyone else. Fourteen."

  She sucked in her cheeks. The same as
everyone else. So at fourteen, everyone in his world was independent. She kind of liked that. "How old are you?"

  "A couple of years older than you. I think Paxton said you were what, sixteen, seventeen?"

  "Yes, just turning seventeen." A loud buzzer sounded. Relief washed over him. He raced to the one wall and placed his hand on a circle looking thing. A large screen materialized taking up most of the wall at his head height.

  "Greetings, Eric?"

  "What's going on? Where is everyone?" Eric stared into the blue screen. Standing beside him, Storey couldn't see anything, but a blue snow. She had no idea who he was speaking with.

  "We're under attack. Central is on lockdown." A computerized voice gave a general status report. Understanding washed over Eric's face. "Who's attacking? We've never even had enemies before."

  Storey winced at the overwhelming fear in his voice. She already knew the answer.

  "The Louers are attacking."